Ethical considerations and validity

As to ethical issue of my research, all the interviews were conducted with the consent of the respondents. Before starting each conversation, I presented myself, explained the intentions of my research, informed my potential informants about their role in it and contribution, and, most importantly, about their rights, such as anonymity and confidentiality.

Additionally, I prepared a written informed consent (Appendices 4, 5, 6), which the interviewees were asked to read and to sign in case they agreed with everything. The informed consent was translated into Portuguese. However, in some cases, when the interviews appeared spontaneously, only oral consent was taken.

Also, I did not use any real names in my writing and gave my interviewees only subsequent ID numbers which I applied in the profile and coding frames used for analysis, as mentioned above. Also, during my interviews, I followed privacy mode whenever it was possible, trying to avoid extra audience. Before using an audio-recorder I asked for the permission from my respondent. The audio recordings from all the interviews were not disclosed to anyone, unless it was needed for the purpose of this research. To give something back to my respondents for the conversations and time devoted I symbolically thanked most of them with a box of sweets (except when the interviews happened spontaneously).

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Regarding validity of my findings, there are several limitations that could potentially affect the quality of my data.

First, preferably, more interviews with domestic workers should have been organized at their homes, so that they could speak even more freely and I could give better account on their living conditions. This was one of the pitfalls, particularly in the beginning of my fieldwork, since I also needed to consider the time, which people, who were nicely helping me with interpreting, disposed. Many of the domestic workers live on the outskirts of the city and it might take more than one-two or sometimes more hours to get to their places. Not a remote location was a limitation, but rather my dependence on help with the language, as I could not speak Portuguese good enough for communicating freely with my respondents and they in turn could not speak any of the languages I was fluent in. At the same time, some interviews with domestic workers did take place at their homes.

Since I wanted to interview the employers as well, they kindly agreed to receive me in their houses and shared with me a small part of their lives and reality, as many of them were friends of my gatekeepers. Conversations with all the employers seemed to be very open and sincere. Generally, meetings at employers` homes were easier to arrange in a practical sense, in terms of convenience for respondents, help with interpreting and due to existence of already built-in trust. Also, some of the employers could speak English. They often suggested having a conversation with their domestic worker as well, with her consent and agreeing beforehand about a time and a place most convenient to her. Several times these encounters, by choice of domestic workers, also appeared to be at employers` homes, but while the latter were at work. So, the respondents were feeling comfortable. In case employers were home, normally they were not present at the same room during the conversations, to respect the issue of privacy. During two interviews, however, they were in the same room, but I felt it would not be polite to ask them to leave.

Sometimes the interviews happened quite spontaneously and in a couple of cases they were during domestic worker`s working hours. Although I was not sure, whether the conversations would not interrupt their work, employers usually were suggesting this themselves ensuring me that it was completely fine. In those cases, when I asked domestic workers personally whether it was convenient for them to talk in this setting and whether they would prefer another time or location, usually they answered that it was fine for them, as long as their employers did not mind. So, I took the chance. Despite these details, most of the conversations seemed to be honest and I think most of the respondents opened up to me.

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A second limitation, however, deals with a language issue. Most of my interviewees spoke only Portuguese and some of my secondary sources were in Portuguese as well. As already mentioned above, when I started the fieldwork, my language skills were not good enough to conduct the interviews independently. So, assistance with interpreting was needed.

I received great help with that and English level of people assisting me was very good.

Naturally, however, some of the questions might have been asked in a bit different way and the answers of the respondents could not be interpreted word by word. Nevertheless, in a course of time I improved a bit my level of Portuguese, which enabled me to conduct some of the interviews myself and to translate the audio recordings of each conversation into English.

I was kindly helped in the latter as well in order to resolve language doubts and eliminate possible inaccuracies, while transcribing the data into the text format. At the same time, all the quotations in the analysis chapter are provided not in the language they were expressed, which inevitably changes a bit the exact answers given.

My third limitation concerns my position as a researcher. Being a young not Brazilian woman, who have never had a domestic worker in her life and who have never worked in a domestic service, I had outsider lenses, which effected my interpretation of reality and the way I analyzed the data. This might have worked as an advantage as well, helping to approach a given socio-cultural context and a research group from more neutral “out of a box”

perspective. However, my potential research bias, as belonging to the middle-class, as white and as someone coming from abroad required from me a constant self-reflection in order to ease the power relations which were inevitably present in some encounters between people with different socio-cultural backgrounds. According to Devault and Gross (2007), it is essential to a feminist researcher to maintain a reflexive awareness of the relationships between herself and the respondents, keeping in mind that investigation encounters are shaped by many axes of power.

Consequently, taking into account mentioned limitations, in my research I do not aim at strong objectivity, but rather try to deliver truthful accounts of domestic worker’s world through the lived experiences of my respondents and in relation to a specific socio-cultural context. As one of the most prominent postmodern feminists, Donna Haraway (1998), outlined − all knowledges are partial and located (situated). The same statement holds for the critical realism as whole (Bryman, 2008). Since I am applying this social scientific approach, I recognize the partiality and the situatedness of my academic research, which depends on the human agency and the context and, thus, can be interpreted in different ways.

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CHAPTER THREE THEORY

3.1 Definition of a “domestic worker”

According to Brazilian law No.5.859/1972 (known as domestic workers law, lei dos empregados domésticos), domestic workers are defined as the ones who provide nonprofit services on a continuous basis to a person or family within a place of residence. They include cooks, housekeepers, nannies, cleaners, laundresses, chauffeurs, guards, gardeners, elderly caretakers etc. (Gomes & Bertolin, 2009). Since the overwhelming majority (around 90 percent) of all domestic workers in Brazil are women (ILO, 2013), I will not consider men in my research. Additionally, my analysis will be focused on domestic workers who are commonly called “maids” and who are responsible for various types of services within employer`s private residence, such as for instance, cleaning, cooking, washing up, doing laundry, ironing, taking care of children and the elders. At the same time, I will still use the general term “domestic worker”, in respect to the profession of these women, who have recently gained equal rights with all other workers.

This term also encompasses the two major categories of domestic workers in Brazil – empregadas and diaristas. Empregadas is the category that defines women who work full-time, get paid monthly and might sleep (or not) in the house where they work, whereas diaristas are part-time workers, who come once-twice per week and get paid on daily basis. If a diarista works three days or more in a week per one family, by law she is already considered an empregada. If she works less than three days per week for one employer, legally this does not constitute a “continuous basis” service and thus excludes her from being protected by the rights granted for the domestic workers` category. In my research I will use the term “domestic worker” to refer to both empregadas and diaristas in order to highlight the complex character of domestic service, which is expressed by both social and legal dynamics and challenges.

3.2 Peculiarities of domestic work

In domestic service two spheres - private and public – interact, creating a space where economic logics and social practices cross (Rezende, 1995). Since it is performed at home, which is referred to a private sphere, the working conditions of domestic workers are quite different from those found in a typical workplace. Domestic workers remain to a large extent

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in a relative isolation from other workers, often having to negotiate with two (or more) different employers. This makes domestic work sector dispersed and fragmented (Silva, 2010). Moreover, many employers do not perceive themselves as employers in the way they do outside their home, in the public sphere, nor do they view their homes as sites of employment. This is especially common in the case of live-in domestics, because the boundaries between home and workplace, and between the domestic worker’s private life and that of her employer, are blurred (Blofield, 2012). Thus, the labor relation within domestic service tends to be complex.

In addition, the sexual division of labor, based on socially constructed gender roles, assigned taking care of household activities as women`s major responsibilities (Anderson, 2000; Besse, 1996). Being overwhelmingly feminine, domestic work, thus, is not recognized as a “productive” activity, but rather as a “non-productive” personal care service. Its intangible nature has contributed into decreased social and economic value of domestic work and thereby into its invisibility in a public sphere. Moreover, domestic workers perform these socially and economically devalued duties not only in their own houses, but in the houses of their employers as well. Consequently, by taking domestic labor as both a private and professional responsibility, domestic workers end up facing a double social invisibility (Silva, 2010).

Domestic service is also commonly invisible in regards to legal protection. The fact that it is usually performed by more marginalized groups of society i.e. poor dark-skinned women with low education, might explain why issues related to safeguarding rights of domestic workers tend to remain on the border of legal apparatus. Subsequently, until quite recently domestic workers in Brazil had been suffering legal stigmatization i.e. norms applied to domestic workers were less favorable than norms applied to other categories of workers (Gomes & Bertolin, 2009). Additionally, due to the complex nature of domestic service, evasion from statutory norms tends to be considerably higher than in other occupations.

Employment contracts are often verbal, and boundaries regarding the rights and duties of employment tend to be more fluid (Blofield, 2012). Consequently, domestic workers are much more likely than other workers to labor informally.

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, 2012), among 7 million domestic workers in Brazil, only 27 percent are formally registered. What should be noted here, even though the IBGE considers domestic workers to be a part of the informal sector, they are excluded from the IBGE survey of informality. This exclusion, in its turn,

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results in an underestimation of the actual number of informal domestic workers in Brazil (Gomes & Bertolin, 2009).

Despite high level of informality, the relationship between domestic workers and employers is fundamentally a labor relation, and a particularly unequal one at that (Rezende, 1995). The familial, informal relations within the household tend to produce effects that reinforce and exacerbate the inherent inequalities intertwined by race, class and gender in this labor relation. While in many cases an intimate and affectionate relationship does develop between employer and employee, they often tend to obscure the very real labor and power relations between the two counterparts (Silva, 2010), thus rendering domestic workers vulnerable to unequal, unfair and often abusive treatment.

3.3 Social and legal empowerment

Since in my study I aim to trace the dynamics of social and legal empowerment of domestic workers in Brazil, it is important to define what I mean by the concept

“empowerment”. Primarily, it can be defined as access to equal opportunities which implies leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, race, or family economic background do not influence a person’s life chances (Nussbaum, 1995). Developing within themselves or in the society, thus, should depend on people’s choices, effort and talents, but not on their circumstances at birth. As an all-encompassing and diffuse problem, inequality of opportunities is less visible and harder to target for specific eradication policies, but it may be found wherever we look: income, education, employment, physically occupying geographic space, and even citizenship are stratified and unequally distributed (Scalon, 2013).

Empowerment occurs through improvement of conditions, standards, and a global perspective of life, in a sense of opening access to more opportunities (Gottfried, 2008). It encourages people to gain the skills and knowledge that will allow them to overcome obstacles in life or work environment and ultimately, help them to become self-sufficient and self-confident (Esping-Andersen, 2009).

It might be stated that legal protection in a sense of granting equal rights is one of the first conditions of empowerment (Banik, 2007). Although equal rights do not necessarily assure equal conditions or are automatically translated into social equality, discrimination in legal terms can be regarded as an institutionalization of inequality. It does not only maintain and perpetuate, but also reaffirms and warrants an unequal and unjust status quo (Blofield, 2012). In addition, there tends to be a gap between the formal legal entitlements of domestic

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workers and their treatment in practice, which has been frequently recognized in the work of the ILO (ILO, 2012). Since more than 70 percent of the domestic workers in Brazil are not formally registered (IBGE, 2010), it makes even more difficult if one needs to claim for her rights, thus, empowering them in this regard is necessary.

Merely legal empowerment, however, is not sufficient, since there are also social stigmas. Through practices of social discrimination and prejudices they might create significant obstacles on a person`s life path, particularly if the one belongs to a marginalized group. Performing the same activities in their jobs and at their own houses, domestic workers carry a double burden of domestic responsibility, which increases the social exclusion of these women.Division between public and private sector mentioned earlier can be also indicated as a powerful ideological tool that has been used to justify a lower social position of women.

However, their social devaluation does not finish on the gender bias that permeates domestic activities. Incorporated within the dynamics of the private sphere, the sector of paid domestic work also operates in compliance with a social inequality based on race and social class. For instance, 26 percent of economically active black women in Brazil work as domestic workers in contrast to 14 percent of white women which points to a predominance of dark-skinned women in this working sector (PNAD, 2012). Also, the lower number of black women working on a formal basis in relation to the white ones (IBGE, 2012) indicates that racial issues also have impact on their working conditions, particularly payment level, resulting in the self-perpetuating unequal opportunity after generations of forced disadvantage (Lovell, 2000). Thus, marginalized position of domestic workers requires not only the formal protection, but also social empowerment to promote equal opportunities.

Fanon (2008) in his publication about empowerment of black women advocates that it is necessary to go through a process of consciousness-raising and overcoming both wounds and attachment to a painful past, reaching freedom in order to tune into the present social reality and taking action for commitment yourself towards equality. Such authors as Ungar and Liebenberg (2008), link empowerment and resilience emphasizing the role of the cultural context and stressing the importance of racial belonging, positive esteem and self-confidence of black women. The research carried out by Carvalho (2008) also links resilience and empowerment, suggesting an aggregate term: autonomy to overcome and emancipate.

Martins (2013) addresses elements which might have enhanced empowerment in educationally-successful women, by measuring skills such as self-control, self-confidence, gaining and retaining sympathy, optimism and a sense of life.

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As the precarious character of domestic work sector is expressed both socially and legally, exploring domestic workers` empowerment from social and legal perspective can give more comprehensive picture of their access to equal opportunities. Moreover, scholarship done on domestic work tends to focus on migration and globalization issues or challenges in legal regulation of this sector in general, while often failing to cover local matter of paid domestic work. What is lacking are the political and cultural dimensions, values, understandings and perceptions on inequality, changes to the stratification structure and acquiring status, and also social agents` place in social life (Scalon, 2013).

Although it is theoretically and methodologically challenging to grasp all the complexity of social relationships, especially those based on identity-based traits, one might at least attempt to partially fill this gap of knowledge by exploring change in social life and in the system of opportunities. In my research I try to do it through examining the multiple identity of a domestic worker in Brazil and the fluid process of its construction, since what happens in domestic life is constitutive of wider social divisions, working as a universe integral to the national socio-cultural context (Silva & Pinho, 2010).

Consequently, it appears relevant to follow the dynamics of social and legal empowerment of this group of women through the lenses of intersectionality, which highlights various intersections of gender, class and race and thus enables to explore the identity of a domestic worker in different dimensions of social reality.

3.4 Feminist intersectionality

Intersectionality is an analytical tool which stems from the critical theory of postmodern feminism (Pheko, 2011). Intersectional analysis aims to understand and respond to the ways in which gender intersects with other aspects of identity such as race and class that are sources of systematic discrimination (Gottfried, 2008; Pheko, 2011; Riley, 2004). The definition adopted by the United Nations is as following:

An intersectional approach to analyzing the disempowerment of marginalized women attempts to capture the consequences of the interaction between two or more forms of subordination. It addresses the manner in which racism, patriarchy, class oppression and other discriminatory systems create inequalities that structure the relative positions of women, races, ethnicities, class and the like … racially subordinated women are often positioned in the space where racism or xenophobia, class and gender meet. They are